Based on personal experience, my question is: Does the process of going through menopause, or actually being post-menopausal, affect the thinking process?
No, this is not a joke! This goes beyond the ditziness or scatterbrained feeling that I and many of my friends have been experiencing. I really started to worry recently when I moved and had various simple tasks to do in the new place such as putting up closet shelves, hanging medicine cabinets, putting up window binds, etc. These tasks used to be easy for me, I had a good sense of spacial orientation, etc. But the last month or so I have been doing the stupidest things.
For such simple tasks, I really started to wonder whether menopause has a bad effect on my brain! Haave there been studies about it? Is the problem temporary or does it stay that way?:eek:
On the other hand, and I can’t find a link at the moment, I saw a piece on television about a guy who was born with underdeveloped/undescended genitals and was (as was apparently fairly common in the '50s-'60s) raised as a girl, with estrogen treatments, etc. When medical thinking evolved and they decided to discontinue the estrogen, he (I guess I’ll say he) reported heightened mental acuity and a diminution in the “fog” that he had always felt while on estrogen. So maybe there will turn out to be a good side too.
Yes. There are books on perimenopause that are pretty easy to find at Borders or Amazon. It’s helpful to have an outside source of information to confirm that your poor word finding, organization, and concentration skills are not evidence of early-onset dementia!
I’ve been put in simulated menopause for medical reasons…which involves completely depriving my body of estogen…and I can tell you without question that it has definitely impacted my brain.